Many of today's electronic systems are portable and provide users with mobility and ease of transport. Laptops, cellular phones, digital cameras, portable gaming systems, handheld GPS receivers, are just a few examples of portable electronic systems. All of these systems have become increasingly lighter and smaller in form factor, while at the same time, however, these systems have ever greater performance than their predecessors. The increased performance typically has come at the expense of greater power consumption. Since these systems rely on battery power, system designers make an effort to design systems for low power consumption so that the systems can be operated for a greater length of time before replacing or recharging the battery.
As part of the effort to design lower power electronic systems, system designers build these systems to utilize components and circuitry that operate with lower power consumption. An example is to include a memory system that has low power consumption since today's electronic systems nearly universally include memory systems for storing data that are used during operation. The tradeoff between operating at lower power while maintaining or improving performance is a difficult one since greater memory capacity or improved speed typically come at the cost of additional circuitry, which translates into additional power consumption. As a result, memory system designers are continually looking for creative solutions to improve power consumption, but at the same time, without compromising performance.